DOC SAVAGE: THE INFERNAL BUDDHA (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) by Kenneth Robeson, Lester Dent, Will Murray Read Free Book Online

headed for Pirate Island.”
    “Holy cow, why?”
    “ ’Cause, me hearty, we just happen to be bloody piratical! They call me Dang Mi, the Scourge of the South China Sea.”
    “Never heard of you.”
    “And that’s the way I like it,” chortled Dang Mi. “This way, no one will be looking for me special-like if I end up feedin’ you to a nice, grinnin’ mako shark.”
    “Holy cow,” Renny said again, unhappily.

Chapter 5
Pirate Island
    PIRATE ISLAND, as it turned out, lay near Chinese waters.
    These days, Chinese waters were nervous waters. The Japanese were in Manchuria and the British were unhappy about it. In the middle were the Chinese. They were the least happy of all.
    Poetical Percival Perkins stood watch in the bow of the Devilfish as she ran under sail in the direction of Pirate Island, a good British Army rifle nestled in the crook of one arm. He scanned the dark waters for trouble. The rhyming swindler had been at this post all day and it was deep into the night now.
    Various cut-throats had been sent to relieve him. Poetical Percival had sent them away with a surly verse during the day and vicious kicks after the sun had set. He was on edge. There was good reason for it, too.
    Poetical Percival Perkins wanted no part of China, because the authorities were interested in standing him before a stone wall and shooting him by way of proving that it is not wise to murder Chinese silver prospectors for their pokes. This was trackless water, and there were no Chinese authorities here. But they were near the coast. The silver markets were also on the coast. It was to flee China that Poetical Percival had booked passage on the Devilfish. Not that he had so much silver to market. The real reason was painfully simple. He wanted to get his life to a safe place.
    Somewhere in the middle part of the night the Diesel engine kicked into life. Thinking it meant trouble, Poetical Percival ducked low and scuttled back to the poop deck, clutching his sturdy automatic rifle.
    “Trouble?” he demanded of Dang Mi, who sprawled on a throne-like chair set atop the high poop. Despite the late hour, he was wearing a tropical pith helmet that shone in the moonlight.
    “Naw,” snorted Dang. “We’re just home, is all.”
    Poetical Percival looked about the night. He made faces. It was plain he could see nothing but murk.
    “So? How do you know?” he asked.
    “Ever hear of black light?”
    “Every night is black,” muttered Percival.
    “I said, ‘light’ not ‘night.’ Black light is another name for what they call ultra-violet light. You can’t see it except with special filters. Here.”
    A pair of what appeared to be smoked glasses were handed to Percival. He put them on.
    And suddenly, off the port bow, he could see it. A low lump of a thing, lazy with palms. It was an eerie sight because it was ablaze with a kind of grayish light. The island might have been a black and white photographic image projected on the water with an old fashioned magic lantern, except that the palms swayed.
    “I set projectors around the beach,” boasted Dang Mi. “My Malays turn ’em on every night so’s I can find my way home if necessary.”
    Percival surrendered the glasses.
    “Slick trick,” he said admiringly.
    “I ain’t the Scourge of the South China Sea for nothing, my fine friend.”
    THERE was a small cove and the Devilfish put into it.
    Chinese junks are ingenious craft. Constructed without a keel, they instead come equipped with a removable daggerboard. This was lifted out of its slot on the foredeck, back of the foremast, and carried to the bows.
    At a guttural order from Dang Mi, the helmsman beached the craft, which had become as flat-bottomed as a lowly sampan. The bow grated on fine, granular sand for a third of its length, stopped.
    The pirate crew dropped anchor without so much as a rattle, thanks to care and a lining of rubber around the hawse hole. It was a medieval stone anchor, perfect for anchoring on